Dan Reynolds, PhD: From High School English to Excel Instructor
Meet Dan Reynolds, PhD. Dan has over fifteen years of teaching experience including high school, undergraduate, and masters classes — and five years with Research Rockstar. His expertise crosses many kinds of statistics, from basic inferential stats to more complex regressions, multilevel models, structural equation models, and item response models. Dan is an Assistant Professor of education at John Carroll University. He received his PhD in Education from Vanderbilt University in 2017, specializing in quantitative methodologies for social science research with a focus on high school literacy instruction. He also holds a M.Ed in Education and a BA in English from the University of Notre Dame. Dan was recently interviewed by Melissa Donovan.
MD: Hi Dan, thank you for taking the time to speak with me. Why is it important for market researchers to have a solid understanding of Excel?
DR: Because Excel is an industry standard, it’s almost impossible to avoid working with Excel—even if you have more complex analysis software available. So you often will get files in Excel format, and if you know how to run quick analyses in Excel, you can save yourself time. Also, Power Excel users can send their clients completed data files with the assurance that they’ll be able to read them. There’s nothing worse than having a time-sensitive project being held up by a client’s inability to open a file! Additionally, Excel’s integrations with Word and PowerPoint make it easy to create attractive visuals. While I use the statistical software Stata for my more advanced statistical analysis, I always come back to Excel for reporting.
MD: What is an example of something you teach in this class that people are surprised you can do in Excel?
DR: Multiple regressions! In fact, I didn’t even know Excel could run multiple regressions until I started researching Excel features for this class. Although Excel can’t do everything with regression—I still have to use Stata for multilevel regressions—it can certainly do a lot of the quick initial work as I explore models and try to understand my data.
MD: A lot of Excel users love pivot tables. Are there any common misconceptions about pivot table you would like to correct?
DR: One mistake I see a lot of students make is jumping straight into creating pivot tables before specifying their research question precisely. Because pivot tables are such powerful tools, we’re eager to get our hands on them and start creating beautiful displays. The catch however, is that it’s almost too easy to create a large crosstab with dozens of cells, and the actual insights get lost in the sea of numbers. That’s why I always encourage students to have an analysis plan before they start playing with their pivot tables.
MD: What is something interesting about you that not many people know, or that may come as a surprise?
DR: I was once a high school English teacher, so I love writing and grammar. But, I also specialized in quantitative methods for my PhD, so I also love complex statistical analyses. It’s an unusual combination, but I can’t give up either of my two loves! It also reflects on my work here at Research Rockstar: I teach both a market research writing course as well as an Excel course.
Interested in taking Dan’s upcoming Excel for Market Research Data Analysis? This course starts Sep 15 and runs 4 consecutive Tuesdays (Sep 15, 22, 29 & October 6 from 1-2:30PM EST.) The on-demand version of this course is available to take anytime here. About this course:
Excel for Market Research Data Analysis Good news for survey researchers: Excel can be used for real data analysis. Have your computer handy and Excel launched for this fun, fast-paced, hands-on class for anyone wanting to analyze data—without using SPSS. This 4-part program starts with pivot tables, covers t-test and chi-square tests, and continues up to and including regression. All in Excel.
Dan is also teaching a writing course that will turn your “good” writing skills to “great.” Writing for Impact – A Bootcamp for Market Researchers will run four consecutive Thursdays (10/8, 10/15, 10/22 & 10/29) from 11am-12:30pm. Want more details?
- During this 4-part course, you will see strong and weak examples of market research writing, and learn key writing concepts that will transform your reports, emails, and presentations.
- The course will cover basics of style such as punctuation and usage, and help students develop their own house style guides adapted to their specific audiences.
If you are already a Research Rockstar member, this course is in your Training Portal. Not yet a member? We have options.
